Minerva and the Muse A Life of Margaret Fuller

"She shows how obsessed Fuller was with achieving the right balance between her natural sociability and the claims of solitude. Von Mehren relates the conflict to Fuller's own sense of an androgynous division in women's temperament between (masculine) intellect and (feminine) felling, to which Fuller assigned the mythological figures of Minerva and the Muse....Hers is the sort of biography that a historian might have written. Among the strongest pages are those detailing Fuller's participation--as nurse, conspirator and propagandist--in the struggle for Italian independence, and the heartbreaking events leading up to her death."Von Mehren, Joan is the author of 'Minerva and the Muse A Life of Margaret Fuller' with ISBN 9780870239410 and ISBN 0870239414.